Thinking Fast and slow, Daniel
Kahneman, Penguin Allen Lane, Pg 499.
This review was published in the August issue of The CSR Analyst
Daniel Kahneman, a
Nobel Laureate in Economics contributed his groundbreaking work on biases in decision
making and uncertainty with Amos Tversky. The process of how the human mind
works, the manifestation of heuristics and the application of different types
of thinking process have been at the heart of his research. Such an exploration
of individual cognition through both the fast intuitive thinking process and
the deliberate logical thinking mechanism has had a significant impact in the
understanding of unobserved flaws and prejudices of human intelligence. This
telling revelation abou flawed intuition and quick interpretation has changed
the way in which not just academics but powerful people in seats of decision
making view themselves and their failure to realise their own dogmatic
assumptions. That human mind is susceptible to systemic errors has made our
understanding of our selves by giving us, as Kahneman remarks in the
introduction, ‘a richer and more balanced picture, in which skills and
heuristics are alternative sources of intuitive judgements and choices.’
The Power of Recognition
The key to
understanding flaws in intuition is to primarily decompose intuition itself
into a process worth scrutiny. Though expert intuitions seems marvellous to our
untrained minds, every human being is capable of making excellent intuitive
judgements every day of her life. As Herbert Simon remarked pithily, ‘Intuition
is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.’ If intuition and the
associated fast thinking process means simply skipping the steps of laborious
logical thinking because we identify the pattern, then it is an extremely
useful tool in the functioning of human beings. These entirely automatic mental
activities through perception and memory serve us well in certain situations
but give us a completely wrong picture in others. ‘Our blindness to the obvious
and our blindness to our blindness’ is at the core of judgement fallacy.
Kahneman uses the
concept of ‘two systems’ to understanding these two variants in thought
process- the rapid intuitive understanding and the slow and tedious logical
thinking. The ease of the first one and the mental effort required for the
latter are dependant not only on the circumstances but also on our state of
self at any given point in time. Both internal and external factors influence
our choice of thinking and humans in general rely much on intuitions since they
find logical thinking ‘mildly unpleasant’ most of the time. The interesting
juxtaposition that Kahneman makes is between some internal factors that control
our intelligence- people with greater self control usually have a greater
ability to use their logical apparatus by taking control of the cognitive task
at hand and allocating attention and effort efficiently even as four year old
children as an experiment conveys. This association of certain personality
traits and intelligence is not new but the experiments and conclusion with
respect to heuristics is illuminating.
Overcoming Illusions
The pleasure of
cognitive ease and inversely the strain of cognitive effort are instrumental in
creating ‘illusions’ of reality in our lives. The machine for jumping into
premature conclusion works with a complex system of association, memory and
even lack of will and laziness. Understanding the dual self in humans has wide
implications in dismantling economists and philosophers in surprising ways. The
engaging read divided into five parts slowly unravels the mechanism of our
cognition, the biases that favour or hinder it, the impact it has in our
choices and decision making and finally the lack of recognition of our own
other self. There is never a dull moment while engaging with this book since it
prods and provokes us through activity based learning, enriches us through
lucid interpretations and direct introduction to an astonishing range of ideas.
In a way, this book encompasses the three stages in the author’s intellectual
life- that of cognitive bias, alternative process through prospect theory and
his recent venturing into the science of ‘happiness’. In the end, it appeals to
the sceptic within us to question our easy assumptions and our exaggerated
sense of understanding of the world and temper it with a more conscious
effortful way of thinking and understanding that might lead us towards a more
fruitful assessment of ourselves and the world around. This book is a valuable
read that gives immense intellectual satisfaction to those who would like to
understand the mechanism of understanding and the cornucopia that the human
mind is.
